Film Screening "Where the Wind Blew"

Ambassador Aitzhanova,
Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

Let me begin by thanking the Permanent Mission of Kazakhstan and the Office for Disarmament Affairs for organizing this event to commemorate the International Day Against Nuclear Tests. The proclamation of this International Day was, of course, a Kazakh initiative. I commend Kazakhstan on its continued leadership in this field.

The history of nuclear testing is a story of immense suffering for peoples all over the world. The horrendous damage of nuclear testing cannot be contained in either time or space. Some of the world’s most vulnerable communities continue to suffer the effects to this day.

As the nuclear weapons testing programmes of the Cold War recede into the past, it becomes all too easy to forget their real and devastating human impact. The International Day against Nuclear Tests is an important reminder that we should neither forget nor ever stop striving towards a legally binding prohibition against all future testing.

Given today’s fragile security landscape, it bears remembering that the international community came together at the very height of the Cold War to agree the Partial Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty and then the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, negotiated right here at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva.

These instruments are expressions of the norm against testing nuclear weapons, a norm that has solidified in the two decades since the adoption of the CTBT. Indeed, this century, only a single state has defied this norm.

As part of his disarmament agenda, “Securing our Common Future”, our Secretary-General recognizes that the ban on nuclear weapons tests is an important step on the road to a world free of nuclear weapons. He has appealed for its immediate entry into force.

The voluntary moratoria on testing maintained by most nuclear weapon-possessing States are a positive contribution to international peace and security. However, they are no replacement for the global, legally-binding ban on nuclear-testing contained in the CTBT.

And while parts of the CTBT regime are already in operation – the International Monitoring System for example has proven its ability to verify the nuclear test ban – other components of the verification system will only be active upon the Treaty’s entry into force.

The issue of ending nuclear testing has a special significance for us here in Geneva. The CTBT was the last instrument to be negotiated in the Conference on Disarmament, some 22 years ago. The treaty itself is a testament to the ability of the Conference to negotiate agreements on politically sensitive and technically complex issues.

This makes the decades-long stalemate in the Conference all the more unfortunate.

In the past months, we have seen incremental progress in getting the Conference on Disarmament back to work. I hope that Member States will build on this progress, so that the Conference will once again live up to its mandate as the single multilateral disarmament negotiating forum of the international community.

Everyone here knows that much work remains to be done. The film we are about to watch is a timely and powerful reminder of the urgency of getting on with it.

Thank you.